While he had been blessed by the preservation of Messrs. Crisp, Bewley, and Twining, he had neither inclination nor time for any diffusion that would have robbed him of their incomparably endearing and enlightening society. A few days in rotation were all that he could bestow on his many other claimants; but the two first of these heart, head, and leisure-monopolizers, Messrs. Crisp and Bewley, were gone; and had left a chasm that the third only could fill; and he, Mr. Twining, was now almost unremittingly occupied in kindly attendance upon a sick and suffering wife.

The next who, now, ranked nearest to Dr. Burney for consolation and confidence, was Mrs. Crewe; to whom he would willingly have dedicated the greatest part of his wandering holidays, but that her country residence, at Crewe Hall, in Cheshire, exacted two journeys so incommodious and fatiguing, that it was rarely, and with difficulty, they could be undertaken.

To his valuable old friend, Mr. Coxe, he gave a week or two, at his pleasant villa, near Southampton, every season. And he made rambling visits, of a few days, to Lady Mary Duncan, Sir Joseph Bankes, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Garrick, Lady Clarges, and several others.

With his two sons, and his eldest daughter, as their residences were within a few miles of his own abode, he was in constant commerce; but to his Susanna, since she had been separated from the paternal roof, he devoted a fortnight every year; and he gratified his fourth daughter, Charlotte, now resident in Norfolk, with visits rather longer, because her greater distance from Chelsea made them necessarily less frequent.